Louie Lobster died recently and went to sea world heaven.Louie was completely sin free, and Poseidon, so suprised by this gave him a free day alive and in the flesh to experience any form of sin he wished. Louie thought for a moment, and said that he always wanted to go "dirty dancing". So Poseidon put him on the noon sub to Atlantic City, gave him 10,000 bucks and small hand held harp, and said "If you get in trouble, just strum the harp and you will be back by my side, safe and sound!

The sub hatch opened to the docks of a hotel and discotheque called "The Clam Bake" where Louie proceeded to have the time of his "life". After drinking and gambling for a few hours, he asked the waitress to get the owner, for he had a special request. Shortly thereafter, the waitress came back with the owner who said to Louie "I'm Sam Clam, the owner here what can I do for you?" Louie told him he was in town for one night, and that he would like the company of a lady who could "dirty dance" (as he slipped him a thousand dollar bill). Sam immediately got on the phone with his buddies and they found the best dancer in town for Louie.

Louie Lobster fulfilled his dream of being the hottest thing on the dance floor that night. He woke up the next morning with a huge hangover and at 11:55am. "Yipes!" He shouted, and he jumped up immediately, ran out the door, down the hallway, down the stairs, through the lobby out the front doors down to the docks where the sub to sea world heaven was waiting. He dove in just as the hatch was closing. Louie stood up and brushed himself off, and as he was rubbing his aching head he thought to himself in shame "Opps, I left my harp in Sam Clam's disco".

Sam and Jane were a very nice couple, liked by their friends and business associates. Their one disappointment in life was that they could not have children so they both immersed themselves in work and became very wealthy and successful.When they came to retire they discovered that although they were very happy with each other and still in love, something was lacking in their lives. They discussed the situation with friends who suggested they get a pet to enrich their days. Sam and Jane were quite taken with the idea. However they had spent so much time apart at their work they were rather looking forward to travel and a that putting a pet in a boarding kennels for extended periods would not be fair to the pet.That seemed to end that and sadly Sam and Jane decided to go on without a pet. Then, one day Sam was passing a Pet Shop owned by a man he knew so, on a whim, he stopped in to talk to his pal Jim.After the usual catch-up chat, Sam told Jim about his and Jane's decision about a pet.Jim looked thoughtful and said, "I may have the solution.Come to the back room with me. Sam followed Jim into the back room and there, on a shelf, was a small furry creature about the size and shape of a soccer ball humming happily to itself. "This may be the solution," Jim said. "This creature is unique. It is happy alone or with people. It doesn't eat or drink. It is affectionate and cuddly and a great companion. It is in fact an un-named species and so rare that we call it a "Rarey. I know you and Jane would give it a good home so you can have it if you want it. There is just one thing ... you must keep it inside and not tell anyone about it because they are so rare someone might steal it or put it in a lab to study it or something horrible like that."Sam agreed with the condition of secrecy and patted the Rarey and was rewarded with a soft gurgle of delight from the creature.Sam was delighted and, after a price was agreed upon, took the Rarey home to Jane who was thrilled with the new addition to their lives -- even though she had to keep it secret -- and named it Puffy. Things went along swimmingly and Sam and Jane decided to go on a trip. When they got home all was well with Puffy except for one thing. Puffy was now quite a bit larger and no longer fit on the chair that Sam and Jane had set aside for it. The solution was to let Puffy live on the King Size bed in the guest room and that worked wonderfully well ... for awhile. Sam and Jane had grown to love Puffy who would cuddle with them, sing when they were happy and croon consolingly when things went wrong ... so when they discovered that Puffy was getting too big for the King Size bed they knocked out a wall and doubled the size of the room. Puffy was fine again. Sam and Jane were delighted and all went well for a time until they went on another trip.When they came home they discovered that Puffy was now too big for the room!Jane said, "We have to do something, dear. It's not fair to keep Puffy all cooped up. Go talk to Jim at the Pet Shop and see if he has any suggestions.""Good idea," said Sam and off he went. After telling Jim how much he and Jane loved Puffy the Rarey and how the creature had enriched thier lives, Sam explained the size problem to Jim."Aha," Jim said, "Puffy should be set free to return to his home." He went on to explain that Rarys were great swimmers and if put into the ocean they would unerringly return to the small island that is their home. After much discussion as to how to accomplish this Sam went home and told Jane. She was very upset about losing Puffy and cried until Puffy's crooning soothed her. SAm, Jane and Jim spent some time thinking of where Puffy could safely be put into the sea and -- when Jim assured them a small drop would not hurt Puffy -- it was finally decided the top of a small hill that dropped directly into a deep bay was the spot where Puffy could be sent off to find his way home. Sam arranged to rent a huge flatbed truck and a winch then, covering Puffy with canvas, and in the dark of the night to avoid prying eyes, he and Jim loaded Puffy onto the truck and with Jane between them in the truck cab they drove all night, hour after grinding hour, until they finally reached the hill by the sea. There, they said their farewells and gently pushed Puffy into the sea. All three, tears in their eyes, held their breath until they heard Puffy singing and saw Puffy swimming into the early sunrise. They watched until Puffy disappeared and thanked Jim for his help and for all the years of happiness that Puffy had brought them. Sam and Jane never got another pet. When they spoke of Puffy they remembered all the good times but, SAm said, it had been a tough decision to let Puffy go and the trip to the sea was difficult."Yes, indeed dear," Jane said, It's a long way to tip a rarey."wow

I think it must be the masochist inside me who keeps me reading story after story on this thread even knowing that I will not understand half of the punch lines.Maybe I’m traumatized by a clever editor who decided it was a good idea translating and including one of those stories on a compilation of Asimov’s short stories I read being a teen, and not knowing a word of English by this time.The story, as I recall, was about Sloan who had an alien pet, a sluggish creature named Teddy. He made a bet on his pet winning a race against a quicker one. Everyone on the spaceship was shocked with Sloan being so confident on his pet.When the race started, as everyone expected, Teddy advanced at only a few inches per minute while the other one was running like a hare. Then, when everything seemed lost, Teddy using a unknown until this moment ability, teletransported itself to the finish line winning the race. After that Sloan uttered the final phrase which ended the story:“Todo el mundo sabe que el Teddy de Sloan gana la carrera”.No translator or editor note explaining it. Only years after I figured out that the original end might has been something like:“Everyone knows Sloan’s Teddy wins the race”.

Dear Ann: I just got around to reading about Tipperary. Putting the punch line into yellow drove me nuts, as I simply could not read it, as part of my trouble with macular degeration makes it hard for me to distinguish close shades of color. But I finally found the "Selecting" it which gives reverse video, brought it out clearly, so I was spared the intense anguish of reading long buildup only to be denied punch line. Bill Hunt

Dear wwh, Sorry about that ... I should have remembered my own early troubles with yellow. In case there are others out there who are new to the Board -- You can "see" yellow by highlighting it ! And if the newcomers are really young -- the punch line is a play on an old song from World War ONE ... "It's A Long Way To Tipperary." (Ask your Granddaddy to sing it for you!)wow

No one's posted here in several days. Here's something to get some interest back in one of my favorite areas of English:

Being a college graduate today is not easy. Ask me. Hell, don't ask me. I'm still gonna tell you. Fresh out of Harvard, cum laude, Bachelors in Business Administration, and female on top of that. The world was my oyster, right. Wrong. Dead wrong. You know how you're told "Don't give up your day job"? Someone should have told me not to give up my night job. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. And what makes it worse is my first name! Dorah, believe it or not. But call me Dolly.

After six months of resume rewriting, sidewalk shuffling, inane interviews with insipidly lisping personnel types, I finally hit bottom--a headhunting service. No, that's not true, it was really a personnel agency, a la Snelling and Snelling. One where I might have to pay someone a fee to get a damned job. Ugh.

But the first student loan payments were coming due, and a woman does what a woman gotta do, so, dressed in my one good suit, charcoal grey, cream colored blouse, high-necked, accesorized with a very discrete pearl necklace, limited make up, several copies of my resume and transcripts, and I guess a bad attitude, I was ready for my initial interview.

"Ms. Dorah Bishop?" The first thing I noticed was there was nothing to notice. This guy would have made a perfect secret agent. He was grey through and through, so average he almost wasn't there, if you know what I mean. "I am Greg Entwhistle. Before we get started, may I say you have a very impressive resume. I am certain we will have no trouble finding you a suitable position, most likely one with the fee paid by the employer, though I cannot promise that. But first we will start with some standardized tests."

"Tests?" I replied, "What kind of tests? I'm looking for an entry level management job, not a clerical position."

"Of course, Ms. Bishop," he replied smoothly. "We take great pride in the success of our operation. This is not a clerical test, but a proprietary examination that maximizes our opportunity to place you in a job that you will be happy with, which is the most important aspect of any position, don't you agree?"

I nodded politely. Two hours later I was finished with a bizarre battery of tests, some of them like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Interview, some of them what appeared to be weird questions randomly generated and answered directly into the computer, some eye hand coordination tests, a real mishmosh. A waste of my time, I thought, this is going nowhere. And did that turn out to be wrong.

The next morning I presented myself at Entwhistle's office for the verdict, which was how I was coming to look at it. "Well, Ms. Bishop, the results of your tests were indeed interesting. Oddly enough, you are perfectly matched to only one job,and that job has been our oldest unfilled position for some time now. Between you and myself, I am going to earn a very healthy bonus if you accept the position. But please do not let that influence your decision."

Immediately all the bells and whistles started ringing, gonging, screaming, and sirening. If the job was that hard to fill, there was something desperately wrong. Noncommittal time, Dumb Dorah, I told myself. With a smile on my face and dirge in my heart, I asked, "What can you tell me about this job, Mr. Entwhistle? I am particularly interested in why it has been open so long. Not to mention what has been the resulting damage to the organization of not having the position filled?"

"Well, the job is, according to our computer, tailor-made for you. The correlation between the job itself and your skills, knowledge, abilities, and proclivities scores an amazingly high 90 per cent. I personally have never had a client with that kind of a match, and it probably is a record for this agency. The job has been open for quite some period of time because the employer is very precise in his expectations of a successful candidate. And while this is something we do not normally do, in your case we have forwarded our package to the employer, and the job is yours if you choose to take it."

Interestingly enough, Entwhistle had not told me anything about the job itself, so I pursued my inquiry. "Mr. Entwhistle, this is all very nice, but I still do not know what this job really is."

"Oh, it is medical research. An African corporation has a contract to supply monkey fur for research. Not, pelts, just the fur itself. They have a breeding farm where they raise these monkeys and then shear them every so often. They've altered the monkeys genetically, and they have very long fur, perfect for whatever the research is, and the contract is very long term, so there is plenty of job security."

"Uh, Mr. Entwhistle, this is fascinating as all getout, but what would I be doing?"

"Well, of course, isn't it obvious? Running the monkey farm. You do have a degree in business administration and this is a business."

"You have GOT to be kidding. I don't know the first thing about monkeys."

"That's no problem, the company has good technicians, but they need a good manager. And they believe you are a good manager."

"I thought for a moment. "That's fair enough, and flattering too. OK, I'll at least go take a look. Can you give me directions?"

"Yes, stop downstairs in the post office and get a passport application."

"WHAT?"

"Well, of course, dear Ms. Bishop. The job is located near Timbuktu, in the country of Mali, in east Africa."

"Actually, there are none. This is it. Oh, did I mention how much it pays?" I shook my head, then sat in stunned silence at the price this unknown company was willing to pay to get me onto a monkey farm in Mali. Sounded almost like a joke. The odd thing about this is that it really was not the money that decided me. Not sure what was, but it was not the money, though the thought of paying off all my college loans (which were considerable) in 18 months was a bit compelling.

Three months later I was the head honcho in charge of this farm that breeds monkeys for their fur. I wondered what the Harvard Alumni Association would say, but to tell the truth I found it very interesting, rewarding (besides financially) work that taught me a whole hell of a lot about business administration that I never learned in college.

Then came disaster. The pharmaceutical company threatened to terminate our contract due to an unacceptable level of dirt in the monkeys. So we had to start bathing them every day. Ugh, what a nasty chore that was, monkeys being disagreeable creatures without a lot of thought to cleanliness. In fact, I think they prefer being dirty.

So dirty, in fact, that they would stain a stainless steel sink in a matter of two months, leading to contamination, leading to our having to replace the expensive sinks so often that the expense was cutting into our bottom line. Ever seen the quality of dirt that will stain stainless steel? You do NOT want to, trust me.

A year passed, with profits shrinking monthly, and with no solution (soap or any other kind) in sight. I could see my job slipping away with the dwindling profits, and it was only the chance to see my American boyfriend that convinced me to take a few days off and go into Timbuktu, where I checked into the Timbuktu Hilton. Bob was due in the next morning, so I filled the bathtub up with hot water and soaked my weary (and not-too-clean) body. When the water cooled I pulled the plug and was rewarded with a gurgle of water into the drain. Then EUREKA. I realized there was no bathtub ring. The tub was pristine white, not a mark, not a blemish, not a drip stain, nothing. Unlike Socrates I was able to restrain myself from running naked through the streets. Instead, suitably dried and dressed, I learned from the hotel manager that all the tubs were made of this special wood, grown only in the forests of Mali, and guaranteed to stay clean. No hidden clauses. They stayed clean.

So I arranged to have one of these tubs installed beside each monkey pen. Thus it was that I became known in history as the arranger of "The Unbrownable Mali Sink, by the Hairy Simian Corral."

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